Steve Curtin
Steve Curtin
Steve Curtin is the author of Delight Your Customers: 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service from Ordinary to Extraordinary. He wrote the book to address the following observation: While employees consistently execute mandatory job functions for which they are paid, they inconsistently demonstrate voluntary customer service behaviors for which there is little or no additional cost to their employers. After a 20-year career with Marriott International, Steve now devotes his time to speaking, consulting, and writing on the topic of extraordinary customer service.
Going above and beyond is voluntary
For many years, I’ve gone on record saying that the reason you and I, as customers, consistently receive predictably poor customer service is because...
The presence of purpose – Part 2
I was talking with my daughter about a friend of hers who had applied to work at the reception desk of a local health...
The presence of purpose – Part 1
I routinely ask groups of managers, by a show of hands, how many would consider themselves to be a purpose-driven leader at work. I...
Does purpose resonate with your team?
“That business purpose and business mission are so rarely given adequate thought is perhaps the most important cause of business frustration and failure.” This Peter Drucker quote...
Blue ocean thinking
I was thinking about the widely-read business book Blue Ocean Strategy, which was published 20 years ago, and the application of its central premise...
Inspire employee engagement—on purpose
According to a recent Gallup article, by the end of 2023, 33% of U.S. employees overall were highly engaged, meaning they were highly involved and...
Buying in to purpose
Whenever I present to managers about articulating and revealing guiding statements, organizational purpose, or core values to frontline staff and connecting them to their...
Happy Accidents
Can your customers count on superior product and service quality regardless of the employee involved? Or is the quality of their experience reliant on the...
Digitize to Personalize
Today’s blog post is a part of a series that I will be sharing over the next couple of weeks...
Customers Are in Charge
Today’s blog post is a part of a series that I will be sharing over the next couple of weeks related to what I...
Maximize Return on Experience (ROE)
Today’s blog post is a part of a series that I will be sharing over the next couple of weeks related to what I...
Strive for Top 5 in product and service quality
Earlier this month I analyzed 27 mid-range hotels in the Orlando market using publicly available data from Tripadvisor. These properties ranged from locations near...
The impact of accretion in hospitality
I met a friend for lunch over the weekend. The night before he’d flown in from Las Vegas, having booked a room at a...
How to create an inspired workforce: Inspire
This is the eighth, and final, post in a series aimed at supporting the efforts of leaders, managers, and supervisors to create an inspired...
How to create an inspired workforce: Evaluate
This post is the seventh in a series devoted to creating an inspired workforce. I will share additional posts over the coming weeks to...
How to create an inspired workforce: Operationalize
This post is the sixth in a series devoted to creating an inspired workforce. I will share additional posts over the coming weeks to...
Instill a sense of purpose
I came across a WSJ article this week titled Why Is Everyone So Unhappy at Work Right Now? The article mentioned the well-documented tension between the...
What if employees don’t buy-in to the mission?
From time to time, I get a question similar to this: “What do you do if someone doesn’t buy-in to the company mission or purpose...
How to create an inspired workforce: Connect
This post is the fifth in a series devoted to creating an inspired workforce. I will share additional posts over the coming weeks to...
How to create an inspired workforce: Reveal
This post is the fourth in a series devoted to creating an inspired workforce. I will share additional posts over the coming weeks to...